


An Invisible Boy

by OurImpavidHeroine



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gap Filler, Missing Scenes, Multi, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-11-03 17:57:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17882516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OurImpavidHeroine/pseuds/OurImpavidHeroine
Summary: Team JNR arrives in Argus and waits for everyone else to show up.





	1. Day One: Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> A derailed train; countless miles of empty countryside to traverse on foot, Grimm and other dangers. Team RWBY eventually made their way to Argus.
> 
> Meanwhile, Jaune, Nora and Ren arrive in Argus on schedule. Then what?

“Ren, wake up. We’re here.”

He blinked as Nora shook his shoulder, none too gently, sitting up and peering out of the window. He’d dozed off at some point after they’d left the train station. They’d been stuck there for about two hours after they arrived, Jaune stepping up to take care of the details with all of the officials who'd demanded explanations of what had happened, who was still missing, etc. The remaining Huntsman hadn’t been of much use; he’d mostly gone on and on about how it wasn’t his fault until Jaune had finally snapped at him to shut up. Nora was hungry and agitated, swinging Magnhild about with increasing menace until the officials started to get nervous. He’d finally suggested that perhaps - _just perhaps_ \- they could give a better account of what had happened after they’d had time to eat, sleep and bathe. It was obvious the people in charge weren’t keen on the idea but between the manic gleam in Nora’s eyes and the rapidly increasing volume in Jaune’s voice they had backed down and agreed. At that point Jaune had mentioned that a taxi would be appreciated and when he couldn’t get his sister through his scroll left a message and said they’d figure it out when they got to her house.

He caught himself from yawning and nodded at Nora, who was hovering. “I’m awake.” Jaune’s sister lived in a prosperous neighborhood; no loose cobblestones on the street, the houses spacious and neatly kept up, flowers keeping polite space in decorative boxes, stairs well-swept and windows sparkling. Jaune had said that his sister-in-law made good money as a radio technician and by the looks of it he wasn’t wrong.

He listened. _A man calling for someone in the distance; the scratch of a broom across stone; the quickening of Nora_ _’s breath; the erratic stutter of a bouncing rubber ball; the squeaky wheel of a pram that needed oiling; a dog barking a warning and being commanded to hush._ Safe, for now.

“No charge, compliments of the Argus Railway Company,” the cabbie said, setting the brake before sliding out of his seat. “You kids don’t have much in the way of luggage.” He popped open the trunk as Nora bounded over to peer up at a streetlight.

“Electric lights right here!”

“The city primarily operates on Dust.” He’d read about it before they’d left Mistral. “However, there has been some experimentation with electrically enhanced utilities as well.” He closed his own door and circled around to close Nora’s as well.

“We packed light for the road.” Jaune hauled Nora’s bag onto the sidewalk, followed by his own and Ren’s. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing. Take care, now.” The cabbie got back in and took off, leaving the three of them abandoned on the sidewalk.

“Which one is it, Jaune? They’re all big, tall, super fancy houses!” Her color was hectic as she pinwheeled her arms in several different directions and he exchanged a quick glance with Jaune before putting a hand on her arm. “I’m feeling a little bit…all kind of…” Her entire body shuddered.

“Nothing to worry about.” He let just the slightest thread of his Semblance mingle with her Aura and waited for her breathing to calm.

“Ugh.” She took in a deep breath. “Okay, it’s better.” She threw her arms around him. “I’m just so nervous. What if they don’t like us? What if they want us to leave? What if they didn’t get Jaune’s letter? What if they hate Huntresses and Huntsmen? What if they think my clothes are weird?”

“There’s nothing wrong with your clothes. And Jaune has assured us many times that even if his sister didn’t get his letter that we will be welcome.”

“We will be, Nora. Don’t worry about it.” Jaune had their bags in his hands.

“The thing is, though, is that I have some serious B.O.” She lifted up her arm to expose him to her pit. “Like, the stink is…whooooooiieeeee!”

“Two nights on a train we all stink, don’t worry about it.”

“And my hair is extremely untidy.” His hair was full of knots; there’d been no way to wash it on the train and he’d tried to get some of the tangles out on his own but had been monumentally unsuccessful.

“Braiding,” Jaune sung out, squinting at the address stamped onto a bronze plaque on the side of the house. “Eh, not this one…ah, it’s next door. This one.” He took the steps two at a time before dropping the bags and knocking on the door.

Nora clutched at his hand. “What do we do if nobody’s home?” Before he could answer her the door flung open and a blonde woman with a small child on her hip barreled into Jaune.

“Jaune! Jaune!”

“Saph!” He grabbed both the woman and the baby into his arms, spinning them in a circle, much to the obvious delight of the child. “And Adrian! Hi! I’m your Uncle Jaune!”

The baby considered this and said, “Uhbaaagh,” before reaching up a chubby fist and shoving at Jaune’s face.

“You got my letter?”

“Just yesterday.” She kicked him lightly in the ankle. Her grin was a perfect match for Jaune’s, wide and welcoming. “Thanks for all the warning, jerk.”

“Hey, don’t blame me, I didn’t bring the tower down.” He grimaced slightly. “Although I was involved.”

Without letting go of him she turned that smile on the both of them. “And you’re Ren and Nora, right? Jaune’s told me so much about the two of you I feel like I already know you.”

“I smell bad,” Nora blurted out before flushing and tittering nervously. He squeezed her fingers.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” he said, and bowed slightly. “Jaune has regaled us with stories about you as well.”

Saphron looked around. “Uh…you seem to be missing a few people.” She frowned and punched Jaune on the shoulder. “You didn’t tell them to go and stay at a hotel, did you?”

“They got delayed.” Jaune frowned in return. “We had a sort of issue on the train.”

“An issue?” His sister’s skeptical look was very familiar as well. “Never mind. Tell me inside, okay? Terra’s supposed to be home pretty soon but we’ll see, they’ve been keeping her late all month.” She deposited the baby on his uncle’s hip and gestured towards her front door. “Welcome.”

Jaune’s sister endeared herself to Nora forever by first offering to feed them, not even commenting on the sheer amount of food Nora inhaled, although she did shoot her a look or two over it. The house was very nice inside; comfortable, but not slovenly, although there were a great deal of baby things about. From where he was sitting he could see diapers stashed in various places, toys scattered across the floor and a stray sock stuffed behind a cushion that he pulled out and handed to her, without a word. Jaune was clearly delighted with his nephew, bouncing him up and down on his knee, letting him gnaw on one of his bracers, all while shoveling food in and telling his sister about what had happened on the train.

“The train currently operates on a round trip cycle and they are unable to contact Mistral via phone, of course. They did not clarify for us what their plans were but I assume they will need to send an engine to rescue the abandoned cars. It would make more sense to do this from Mistral as we were considerably closer to that city than this one. It might be that Ruby and the rest will first need to return to Mistral before attempting the journey again.” He reached across the table to take Jaune’s empty plate.

“In other words, all of the options really suck.” Nora handed him her plate as well. “And it’s going to be awhile before they get here, for sure.”

“The fact that there was snow there and that there were actual passengers left behind doesn’t seem to matter to them,” Jaune said, fists clenching up. His sister’s eyes flicked there before going back to his face. “Why can’t they send some sort of a plane?”

“They had not ruled out that possibility, Jaune. I assume we will hear more about a rescue operation when we return tomorrow.” He stood and began to collect the rest of the dishes.

“Oh, you don’t need to do that, Ren!” Saphron half stood, reaching her hand out. “You’re our guest.”

He pulled the plates closer. “Please, allow me.”

“I can give you a hand with those. Nora, you want first shower?” Jaune carefully handed over his dozing nephew to his sister.

“Do I? You bet I do!”

“Well, I tell you what, if you all pass over your clothes I can start up a load of laundry, then. Do you have anything clean to wear?”

The three of them looked at each other. “Uh…” Jaune started, but his sister just snorted.

“Right. Well, I’m sure we can find something for Ren and Nora tonight but I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with you, baby brother that suddenly developed huge shoulders.” She poked at Jaune. “Seriously, what’s with this?”

“Excuse you! I’m man-sized now!”

“Isn’t that a Pumpkin Pete hoodie underneath all that fancy Huntsman armor?”

“Shut up, Saph!”

She just grinned at him. “Come with me, Nora. I’ll find you something and show you where the shower is.” She kissed the baby’s forehead. “And then you need to go to bed, Mister I Won’t Shut My Eyes. It’s way past your bedtime.” Adrian yawned at that as Saphron hustled Nora out of the room, Nora chattering on about different kind of soaps. He hoped Saphron would realize that she didn’t need to engage in what would certainly be an extended monologue. Nora was just letting her nerves loose; an answer was neither required nor, generally speaking, even desired. Back when they’d first teamed up it had taken Jaune and Pyrrha awhile before they’d understood how Nora worked. Poor Pyrrha had done her best to keep up with her until he’d finally taken her aside and said something to her about it. He still wasn’t sure what had surprised her more: the fact that he’d actually spoken to her or the fact that he’d said something so seemingly callous about his friend.

Jaune showed him how to fill up the dishwasher, a machine that he knew about, of course, but had never actually used before. He forgot, sometimes, that Jaune’s background was so different than his. Jaune was as comfortable with most technology as Pyrrha had been. He and Nora had never even seen computer consoles until they’d gotten into combat school, and even at that he’d been unsure enough about them once he’d gotten to Beacon that he’d been grateful to Pyrrha for sitting him down and showing him the ins and outs of them so he could, in return, bring Nora up to speed. (Was she actually up to speed? Probably not, but she was far better at weapon building than he had ever been, so it balanced out in the end.)

“Will coconut do?” Jaune was staring down at a large jar in his hands. “You might end up smelling like pudding or something.”

“There are worse smells.”

“True.” He opened it and sniffed, apparently not finding it too offensive. “I can go tomorrow and replace it, Saph won’t mind. Take your clothes off so I can give them to her and get your hair damp and we can get started.”

He sighed. He knew what he was in for and it was no one’s fault but his own. His hair was too long to keep loose when he was fighting; it tangled, got in his way, obscured his vision. Once he’d taken a chunk of it out when a passing gust of wind had thrown it in front of Stormflower’s trajectory when he was firing. It’s just that when he put it up he saw his mother’s face in the mirror and he wasn’t ready to address that particular quagmire of emotion quite yet. He stripped down to his shorts and did his best to only dampen his hair in the kitchen sink, knowing that getting it soaking wet would make it worse.  Jaune was waiting for him on the sofa in the living room, stripped down to just his shorts as well, a towel spread on the floor in front of him. He waved the comb.

“You ready?”

“It’s not really pertinent to the task at hand.”

“Ren. You’re supposed to say, I was born ready!” Jaune struck a dashing pose, flexing up his biceps.

“I was born ready,” he replied, keeping his voice flat, and smiled, just a little, when Jaune laughed at him, gesturing to the towel.

“Well sit right down here, because boy howdy, do I have a treat for you.” He dug his fingers into the jar and started to smear the oil into the ends of his hair. “Oh, it’s really bad this time. This is why you need to let me braid it.”

“When you braid it it makes me look like a twelve year old.” He gave the coffee table in front of him a little shove to give himself more room before closing his eyes and taking in a few deep breaths, reminding himself that the pain from his scalp would be a fleeting thing, washing away from him like rain across glass.

“I thought ninjas weren’t supposed to care about stuff like that.”

“Even ninjas don’t want to look twelve.”

“Come on, it looks cute. Also? No snarls when I braid it.” Jaune separated his hair into small chunks and applied even more oil, working it in with his hands. “Honestly at this point? After blowing loose on top of a moving train? I’m tempted to just cut it off.”

He opened his eyes. “No cutting.”

“Let me braid it, then.”

“You attempted to put ribbons in it last time.”

“Hey, those ribbons are the same shade of pink as your stripe. I had to go to four different stores in Mistral to get the right shade!” Jaune took up a section and started to gently work the comb through the ends. “That’s just how much I love you.”

“You can’t use them anyhow. Nora absconded with them.”

“I can get them back any time. I know where she keeps her hoard.” At his sharp intake of breath Jaune stopped the comb. “Sorry. Really big tangle here.”

“It has to be done.”

“At least put it back in some sort of clip like you used to.”

His face started to heat up. “Nora prefers it loose.”

“Well she’s not the one combing it, is she?” Jaune tapped his head with the comb. “She can take it down at night, then. This a no-brainer.”

“Okay, I put Adrian down and…” Saphron trailed off, standing in the doorway, eyebrows arched high. “Uh…am I interrupting something here?”

“I’m getting the snarls out of Ren’s hair. I tried on the train but we didn’t have any oil or anything. Hey, put your head back down.” He tilted his head forward slightly. “I stole your coconut oil, by the way. I’ll replace it tomorrow though, I promise.”

“Uh…huh.” He was fairly certain that Jaune’s sister wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but she let it lie for the moment. “So Nora informed me that you and she could share a bed, is that right, Ren?”

“If it isn’t an imposition or somehow trespassing on your rules.” Another wince.

“Sorry.” Jaune shifted his grip, sliding it up to grasp his hair closer to the scalp. “This one is really not cooperating. Yeah, you can put the two of them together. I can crash here on the sofa or whatever, it doesn’t matter. Oh, and here are our clothes. I would not recommend sticking your nose into them. I can’t be responsible if you do.”

“Yep. I’ll just take these then. While the two of you sit there mostly naked and do hair things.”

“Thanks, Saph!”

He couldn’t see her, with his head obligingly bent down, but she didn’t say anything else before walking out with their clothes. He tried to focus on some mindfulness exercises to take his mind off of Jaune’s insistent tugging on his scalp. His shoulders were creeping up around his ears and he took a deep breath, visualizing his breath exhaling through the muscle, trying to loosen them. If he didn’t stop tensing up he’d get a headache and that was something he definitely could do without. He centered on his breathing, calming himself and losing track of time until a particularly sharp yank pulled him back into the present and his eyes flew open, watering up just a bit.

“Okay, finally! Another one down, approximately two thousand to go.”

He closed his eyes again, trying to clear his mind, and listened. _The faint whirring swish of the dishwashing machine in the kitchen; the nearly inaudible humming that Jaune did when he was concentrating, something metallic clinking twice in another room, the pouring water from Nora_ _’s shower turning off abruptly. The scrape of a foot across stone, moving towards them, muted by the wooden barrier of the door._

“Someone’s coming up the stairs,” he announced, hearing the key enter the lock.

“Must be Terra,” Jaune said as the door opened.

“Hey Hon, I’m…” A longish pause. “This was not what I expected when I got home.” A snort. “Hey there, Jaune.”

“Hey, Terra!”

“I see you made it.”

“Terra, this is my teammate, Ren.” He tilted his head up enough to look at her, still standing in the doorway, a pair of red glasses perched on her nose.

“It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Ah, there you are.” Saphron came back into the room. “As you can see, my baby brother has arrived.”

“I do see that.”

“And you met Ren? Nora’s upstairs in the shower.”

“Nora’s here!” She bounced in, hair wet and slicked back, clad in a painfully bright green shirt that read _My sister went to Vacuo and all I got was this lousy t-shirt_ and a pair of cotton shorts. “And I am feeling so much better!”

“Terra, Nora. Nora, Terra.” Saphron was smiling at her wife. “They just arrived. There was an incident on the train from Mistral and the rest of the party’s been delayed, though.”

“I heard about it on the news on the way home. I just wasn’t aware that your brother was involved.” She dropped her keys into a bowl by the door. “Is Adrian in bed?”

“I put him down about a half hour ago.”

“Well, it’s great to meet the both of you. And you again, Jaune, I barely got to talk to you at the wedding.”

“I’m clean, I’m full, it’s all good.” Nora flopped herself on the couch next to Jaune, dropping her head into his lap. “Why does Ren smell like cupcakes?”

“Coconut oil,” Jaune said. “It won’t smell so much once I get all of these out and we wash it.”

She sniffed at Ren. “I don’t know, it’s not all bad. Better than you both smell about right now, that’s for sure.”

“Thank you.” He smiled as she kissed his cheek before pulling out her scroll and shifting herself on the sofa until she was leaning up against Jaune. “How long is this going to take? I’m tired.”

“Go to sleep, then.” Jaune shifted his hair through his fingers. “Actually, I think I got most of the really bad ones already.” He squeezed his shoulder. “Not too much longer, I don’t think.”

“Ren and Nora are going to take the guest bedroom and Jaune is going to sleep on the couch, apparently.” Saphron’s voice sounded amused. He tried to get a glimpse of her face but Jaune firmly pushed his head back down again.

“Oh, I looked, the bed’s pretty big, Jaune, you can sleep with us if you want to.” Nora gasped. “Hey! It is in the news! Listen to this - Beacon Academy students save lives of Argus citizens! Oh. They spelled your name wrong, Jaune. A-R-K.”

“Of course they did.”

“In a heroic act of selflessness, the young Huntsmen and Huntresses guided the terrified, helpless passengers into the front of the train, battling vicious Grimm for hours to protect them.”

“It wasn’t really hours on our part.” He frowned. “That’s clearly an exaggeration. Although there’s no way to tell how long Ruby and the rest spent fighting them off.”

“Like they care. How hard is it to spell Arc? Come on.”

Terra sat down on the loveseat across from the sofa, her wife following her. “So the Grimm just attacked?”

He risked a glance up at her. “That in itself is not uncommon, which accounts for the heavily armed train as well as the paid Huntsmen. However, what was unusual was the fact that the attack seemed coordinated, somehow. Grimm may attack at the same time but they rarely attack together.”

“Yeah, it was really weird. When I asked the hired Huntsman about it - well, the surviving one, I mean - he said they’d never dealt with an attack anywhere near that vicious or coordinated before.” Jaune tilted his head more to the left. “Okay, this is the last big one and I think the rest you can just wash out.”

“So they stayed behind to fight and the three of you didn’t?” Terra crossed her legs.

“It’s Ren’s Semblance. He masks emotion. It means the Grimm can’t sense you. They can be right on top of you but look right past you, they won’t attack.” Nora yawned. “Since Jaune’s Semblance lets him amplify other people’s Aura I thought it might work if Jaune helped him mask the entire train.” Her hand made its way to his shoulder. “It worked, too!”

“My Aura has never been all that robust,” he admitted, reaching up to cover Nora’s hand with his. “I’ve never been able to use my Semblance as effectively before.”

“It was awesome!”

“Yeah, it did work out really well. Between the two of us we were able to keep it going for ten minutes, covering the entire train. The Grimm completely lost interest. Although poor Ren slept like the dead for about twelve hours straight afterward.”

“It took everything I had.” He craned his head back to look up at Jaune. “You still had reserves though, didn’t you?”

“Not much as usual, that’s for sure. It was seriously depleted.”

“How much Aura do you have?” Saphron was leaning forward as Jaune started to slowly pull the comb through from the roots.

“I honestly don’t know. A lot? It really depends on what I’m doing with it. Some things take more of it than others, obviously. I’m getting better at knowing my own limits.”

“Pretty good for a guy who cheated his way into Beacon though, right?” Nora giggled. “I still can’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry, you what the what now?” Saphron’s mouth dropped open. “You cheated? What does that mean? You told us you tested in!"

“Uh…not important!” Jaune chuckled nervously. “All in the past, we can change the subject now.”

“Oh, we are so going to follow up on this, you little cheater. Do Mom and Dad know?” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, her grin incredulous. "I can't believe you!"

"I told you there was something fishy about him getting in without going to combat school." Terra's eyebrows curved up. "Didn't they test you or something?"

"Oh, they tested us the second day there. He didn't know what he was doing!" Nora snickered. "Like, at all. He's lucky that Death Stalker didn't kill him right then and there!"

"Do tell." Saphron was no longer smiling.

"Well, it didn't, obviously. And Professor Ozpin made him team captain, which was really weird, you know? Everyone expected it to be Pyrrha, of course..." Nora trailed off into an awkward silence and it held for a few moments as Jaune's hands stilled.

“If it isn’t inconvenient, I would appreciate that shower now.” He wished Nora hadn’t brought it up. Jaune was sensitive about it, for one thing, and for another it hardly mattered now.

“Oh! Right. Of course.” Saphron stood up. “I’ve got an old robe you can use until your clothes are clean.”

“I’m very grateful.” She led him upstairs, first pointing out the guest bedroom before handing over a faded blue caftan with a design of stars on it, worn and soft and voluminous. He tried not to use all the hot water - Jaune still needed to take a shower and he had no idea of the bathing habits of his sister and her wife - but lingered a little as he lathered up his hair twice. He also felt better when he was done. They’d gone for long stretches on the road where they’d foregone bathing but that was the four of them sleeping rough, not sitting in a living room in the middle of a large city with someone’s elder sister. The last thing he wanted to do was offend their hostesses.

By the time he made it back downstairs and Jaune had headed up, clutching a pair of ancient, baggy sweats, Nora had fallen fast asleep on the sofa, mouth slack, her wheezy snores so quiet as to barely register. Jaune’s sister had considerately left a blanket and he tucked it in around her, making sure she wasn’t squeezed too tightly. She didn’t like that. He dropped himself to the floor cross-legged, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Everything was fine. They were in Argus. Tomorrow they would sit down and figure out what their next steps were before Ruby and the others arrived. Jaune’s sister and her wife genuinely seemed glad to have them here. There were no Grimm in this city. Jaune was fine. Nora was fine. They were here with him. All would be well. All would be well. All would be well.

All would be well.

“Do you think they’re okay?” Jaune’s voice was quiet. He’d heard his step on the stairs, trying to center his weight into his heels instead of his toes when he walked, just like Pyrrha had shown him. He settled down next to him.

“We can only speculate. However, you know that Team RWBY are formidable Huntresses, despite their age and relative lack of experience.”

“I know. It’s just…” Jaune swallowed.

“Ruby is very good. You know this.” He entangled his fingers with his and let his Semblance shimmer, meeting Jaune’s eyes. “And Ruby and Yang’s uncle is with them. He is extremely experienced and more than formidable.”

Jaune gripped his hand. “If he’s not drunk, that is.” He turned their hands over and fed his Aura into his. “And what about Oscar? He’s just a kid.”

“Not precisely.” They sat there for a moment, the silence settling over them, as Jaune’s eyes filled up. “Jaune. We can’t do this. We have to trust them to do their part while we do ours. We’ll take care of things here so that when they do finally arrive we can leave for Atlas as soon as possible. That’s how we can be useful.”

“Yeah, I know. I just…”

“I know.”

Jaune sniffled but then swiped at his eyes with his bare arm before pulling himself up. “Yeah. Okay. Okay. We should go to bed.” He peered down at Nora. “Should we leave her there?”  He’d tied the sweats as tight as they would go around his hips, the cuffs drooping awkwardly halfway down his shins. “I’d carry her up but I don’t want to wake her.”

“You wouldn’t wake her. But I think we can leave her for tonight.” He let Jaune pull him up as well. “Where is your sister?”

“She and Terra went to bed. Kind of early, but I guess parenthood wears you out, or at least that’s what Saph said.” He reached down and smoothed the blanket unnecessarily before yawning, which set Ren off as well. “I’m so tired. Come on.” They started up the stairs. “You going to leave that towel on your head?”

“My hair is still quite damp. I don’t think you’d find it all that comfortable to sleep with.”

“Eh, I don’t really care. Just take it off.”

Jaune, like Nora, was a cuddler. Both of them liked being the Big Spoon; Nora was small, of course, but when had her size ever stopped her from doing anything? He often wondered if she was so slight due to genetics or if borderline malnutrition for years had affected her growth. It stood to reason that it would have, of course. Jaune had always been taller than the rest of them but it had only been in the past year that he’d started to fill out, building muscle as he worked more and more with his weapons, looking less lanky and more solid, his size finally becoming an asset in a fight. He himself had never gotten all that tall but had never worried about it. He was tall enough to do everything he needed to and Nora fit perfectly into his arms and that’s all he’d ever cared about, really.

“Night, Ren.” Jaune whuffled a sleepy, toothpaste-minty sigh into his neck.

“Goodnight, Jaune. May your dreams be pleasant ones.”

“Mmmmmmm,” he mumbled, and then was silent before his breathing slowed into sleep.

He listened. _Jaune_ _’s open-mouthed breathing; a faint, rhythmic thumping that he’d been told was the machine drying their clean clothes; a hushed murmur that was Jaune’s sister and her wife, too soft for him to make out any words; a light scratching at the window that was a branch of a lemon tree that should really be pruned back; a sharp creak that was most likely just an unfamiliar home settling down for the night; the near voiceless thrum of a car passing down the street._ No danger here. No predators, human or otherwise. Just quiet, security, warmth. Satisfied that all was well for now, he slept.


	2. Night One: An Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You shh!"

“Ren! Ren!”

Her screams jolted him out of sleep and his body was moving before his brain caught up, taking half the sheets with him before savagely kicking himself free, flying down the hall, throwing himself down the stairs. “I’m here!”

“Ren!”

He barked his shin on what would later turn out to be an end table, a bit of clumsiness he rarely engaged in, grunting his surprise before vaulting over the coffee table to grab her. “Shh! Shh! Nora!” Her fingers dug into the meat of his shoulders as she hitched out a sob.

“You left me alone!”

“No! Nora, stop. You’re in Jaune’s sister’s house, remember? That’s where we are. You’re in the living room, on the sofa, and I’m right here. I’m right here.” He pulled her close and let his Semblance wash over her. “All is well. You’re safe. We’re all safe. All is well.”

“Where’s Jaune?”

They both squinted as the overhead light switched on, revealing Jaune at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m right here, too.” He moved forward, hands held out non-threateningly. “Nora, it’s okay. You fell asleep and we didn’t want to wake you and so we left you down here.”

“By myself?” The vulnerable waver in her voice pierced through him and Jaune as well, apparently, because he sat down to her other side and wrapped his arms around her.

“It was stupid. We should have brought you up with us.” Jaune lay his head against hers. “It’s just you were snoring, you know-”

“I do not snore!”

“Oh yeah you do.”

“Is everything okay down here?” Terra was at the bottom of the stairs, her hand automatically trying to push up glasses that weren’t there.

“Sorry, Terra. Nora uh…” Jaune shrugged an apology before squeezing her again.

“I’m sorry I woke you up.” Nora was frowning, huddling in on herself, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“It’s okay. Truly.” Terra took a few steps into the room. “Nightmares happen. Also, infants happen. I’m inured to middle of the night wake ups by now, trust me.”

“Adrian’s still asleep,” said Saphron quietly, coming down the stairs as well. “But if we want to keep it that way we’d probably better lower our voices.”

“I’m really sorry,” Nora mumbled, but Saphron smiled.

“Has Jaune ever told you about the Hairy Green Snot Grimm?”

Jaune pointed a finger at her. “Listen, I was six years old! That’s a story that does not need telling!” Even his whisper sounded indignant.

Nora managed a little grin. “Nope. Never heard about the Hairy Green Snot Grimm. But I know I want to!”

Saphron grinned in return. “Well, do I have a treat for you, then. Tomorrow morning. Or this morning. Later this morning, whatever. Me. You. Coffee. Hairy Green Snot Grimm.”

“No coffee!” he and Jaune said in unison and Saphron blinked and threw up her hands as Terra shushed them.

“Whoa, no coffee then.”

“Coffee gets me a little…wound up.” It was Nora’s turn to shrug and he loosened his hold on her.

“I bet,” muttered Terra. “Well, emergency over. And hey, don’t worry, Nora. I’ll drink your coffee for you.” She put a hand to the small of her wife’s back. “Come on, let’s go back to bed. It’s my day off tomorrow, I plan on sleeping in.”

“You assume our son will let you do that.”

“A woman can dream.”

“Yeah, we should go back as well,” Jaune said, and stood up. “Come on upstairs, Nora.”

“Sorry again,” Nora called softly after them, but Terra just waved her off before giving Saphron a little push.

“Are they all going to sleep in the same bed?” He was the only one to overhear Saphron's murmur as he took Nora’s hand in his and pulled her up and along, Jaune turning off the light after them.

“Ow!” Jaune yelped. “Stupid stairs.”

“Shh!”

“Hey, not all of us have pink ninja eyes, you know.”

“Eye color is not one of the determinations of ninja prowess.”

“Both of you shh!”

They tiptoed past Adrian’s room and his mothers’ room across the hall, past the bathroom and into the guest bedroom, the spill of ambient light outside the windows illuminating their way. They hadn't been in a city this big or modern since they'd left Vale. He'd forgotten how it never got dark in a city like this, not really. He hovered in the hall for a moment, listening. _The faint_ sproing _of a bedspring from the bedroom across the hall; Jaune's stifled yawn; the slightly congested sniffle of a baby in slumber; the distant yowl of a cat._ All was well and he closed the door behind him, the near silent snick of metal reassuring him that no one would be able to get in without his notice.

“Why are the covers all over the floor? Did one of you sleep on the floor? Or did Jaune push Ren out of bed?” Nora whispered.

“I didn’t push anyone out of bed!”

“Shhhh!”

“You shh!”

He yanked the covers back onto the bed. “It will be morning soon enough. We should attempt to rest.”

“Well, I’m the meat in the sandwich, boys!” Nora hopped into the bed first. “Also, then Jaune can’t kick me onto the floor.”

“I didn’t kick anyone onto the floor!”

“SHH!”


	3. Day Two: Meal and Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is he amazing or what?”

“It was amazing! I’m telling you, Ren just stood there, never lost his cool, waited for them to be done talking and then boom!” Jaune spread his fingers out. “He pulled out his scroll and started listing out all the numbers. How much the company would have had to pay out to injured or dead passengers, the costs of repair to the train, lost revenue from trade, you name it, he had the numbers.”

“And you got all of that just by looking it up this morning?” Terra extended her glass towards him in a salute. “I am seriously impressed. How did you know what to look up in the first place?”

He glanced around the table. Jaune was sitting across from his sister, supervising his nephew eating a suspiciously grubby banana, Nora to his other side, on her third bowl of ramen. They’d left her behind when they went back to the main train station. It was for the best. Nora’s idea of discussion and negotiation was to knock people unconscious and while it often proved effective it generally did not bode well with people who had established connections to local law enforcement. As it was they’d had to wade their way through reporters to get into the offices before coming smack into security, who had only reluctantly let them pass when a secretary had stuck his head out to see what all the noise was about.

“I wondered why the train would only have two Huntsmen aboard. Was it due to budget restraints? Were Grimm attacks really that rare, despite the heavy armor plating and the automated gun turrets? The defense system was actually fairly comprehensive and must have meant a considerable investment on the part of the company, so I believed something was amiss. It was just a matter of researching public records and making the connections.” He shrugged it off. “We’re Huntsmen-”

“And Huntress!”

“-and Huntress,” he agreed, giving Nora a smile. “Fighting Grimm is what we do. If they are willing to pay the Huntsmen they actually hired then they should be willing to pay us as well. If not for us the train would have certainly been overrun and the loss of life potentially catastrophic.”

“Is he amazing or what?” Jaune gestured at him with both hands.

“Amazing and hot!” Nora leaned towards Adrian. “Brains are super hot, Adrian. Take a note.” Adrian goggled at her and offered her some banana, which she took and popped into her mouth. “Thanks.”

“I get all of that but you kids aren’t technically licensed though, right?” Terra topped off her glass. “I mean, I’m not saying you don’t have experience,” she held up a finger “because clearly you do, but you’re still considered students, yes?”

“That we are.” He could see Terra wasn’t going to let it go and sighed inwardly. She and Jaune’s sister were very kind and had been nothing but welcoming and generous but at a hotel he’d at least not have to deal with an interrogation over his meal.

“Oh oh oh! But it gets better! When the chief guy-”

“The CEO.”

“Right, the CEO, when he started to push back Ren just casually mentioned how we’ve been contacted already by local media looking for a scoop and how the youngest member of our party was only fourteen and the dangers of the cold and them having to wait days and days for a rescue and I swear to you, the guy started sweating right then and there!” Jaune gave him a playful salute. “Amazing.”

“Wait, Ruby’s seventeen, did you forget?” Nora tilted her head at him.

“I was referring to Oscar.”

“He’s not a Huntsman!”

“Not yet. An oversimplification, as it were. I am reasonably certain that he will become one, things being what they are.”

“An oversimplification.” Nora’s grin was infectious. “I like the way you think, sneaky sneak man of mine.” He returned it.

“Hold up, did you say that one of your group is only fourteen?” Terra put her glass back down, mouth drawing into a thin line. “How are fourteen year olds even allowed into Huntsmen Academies anyhow?”

“Ruby started at Beacon when she was fifteen,” Nora threw out before finishing off her bowl with a slurp.

“Fifteen?” Terra didn’t look any happier at that.

“Ruby comes from a family of very famous Huntsmen and Huntresses and her father and uncle are both teachers at Signal Academy on Patch, which she attended. She’s been in training all of her life,” he replied, meeting Terra’s eyes. “She was given special permission from the Headmaster to start classes when she did.”

“She was better at fifteen than most of us were at seventeen, if I’m being honest.” Jaune drew a line along the table. “She’s better than I am even today. She’s something special.”

“Okay, fine, rare prodigy from famous family. But what about this fourteen year old? What’s his background?” Terra was leaning forward.

“Oh, Oscar’s a farmhand,” Nora said, completely oblivious to the quelling looks that he and Jaune were trying to give her.

“Excuse me? A farmhand? A fourteen year old farmhand?” Terra’s voice rose incredulously and Adrian looked up from the banana pulp he was smearing across the tray of his highchair.

Nora realized her tactical error too late, as usual. “Oh! Well, see, Oscar’s special too.” At Jaune’s frantic nudge into her ribs she banged her fist on the table. “But that’s classified! Classified information! On a need to know basis only!”

“Oh boy,” Jaune muttered, sinking his face into his hands.

Saphron reached across the table, taking a hold on Jaune’s wrist. “Jaune?” When he looked up at her she slid his hand into hers. “Jaune, are you in some kind of trouble? You and your friends?” She gave his hand a firm shake. “If you are, please let me help you.” She glanced at her wife. “Let us help you.”

“No! No, Saph, it’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” Terra’s mouth had practically disappeared at this point. “Don’t you even have any teachers along on this trip?”

“One,” Jaune started, while Nora blurted out, “We’ve got two of them.”

Terra leaned forward. “Well which is it? One or two?”

He took in a deep breath and gave Nora a look. “Nora is mistaken. We only have one. Ruby and her sister Yang’s aforementioned uncle.”

“Anyhow, long story short, they are going to pay all of us and they’re sending a rescue plane today for Ruby and the rest.” Jaune banged his fist down on the table. “I can’t believe it took them twenty-four hours to decide that! They should have sent one right away.”

Saphron and Terra exchanged another glance. They weren’t fooled by the clumsy attempt to change the subject, that was certain.

“Jaune, I’m sure they’re fine.” Saphron put her hand over his fist. “There’s the four girls and the uncle and what, this farmhand?”

“Oscar,” Nora said.

“Actually, there was another missing passenger. A woman by the name of Maria Calavera.” He frowned. “They asked us if we knew her but we’ve never heard of her.”

“I thought we got everyone from the back of the train, though.” Nora said. “Did we miss someone?”

“No, we went from car to car, opening up all the compartments.” Jaune leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “I was sure we’d gotten everyone.”

“Maybe she was in the toilet?” 

“We banged on those doors, too,” Jaune said. “Remember that man that yelled at us about it?”

“I remember he came running out with his pants halfway down the minute we said the word Grimm.” Nora snorted.

“I’d like to get back to this whole students traveling around without a teacher thing,” Terra said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I get that you’d head off to another school since Beacon’s been closed down but I still haven’t figured out why you spent months slogging across the continent on foot to get to Haven Academy instead of taking a train or a boat up the coast, at the very least. It makes no sense.”

“You know, last time I checked, we were adults,” Jaune replied, eyes narrowing down. He was starting to get agitated, Ren could tell. “I’m nineteen, Ren’s two months older than me and Nora’s…” he trailed off and looked at her. She shrugged.

“No way to tell, but close enough.”

“You don’t know how old you are?” Saphron tried to hand Adrian a cracker but he wasn’t having it, throwing it aside and kicking his legs as he tried in vain to reach for another banana.

“I have a general idea, but I don’t know a lot.” Nora was matter-of-fact about it, as she always was. “I don’t know who my parents were or where I’m from. By the time Ren and I found each other I’d been living on the streets in his village for a little while, the people that were traveling with me were just gone one morning when I woke up and the innkeeper tossed me out.”

“But…” Saphron was openly staring at her. “Didn’t they…weren’t they your parents?”

Nora leaned back in her chair. “I don’t think so. I had been with other people before them, that much I do remember. We moved around a lot. That last couple I was with, there were two other kids besides me, all of us redheads. I think they were trying to pass us off as siblings or something, as a family, but we weren’t. They were trying to teach me how to steal, pickpocket, that kind of thing.” She grinned. “They had the wrong kid. I was terrible at it, it’s no wonder they dumped me. They should have had Ren, he could steal everything out from under your nose and be fifty miles away before you’d even realized anything was gone.”

“Thank you.” Coming from Nora it was a compliment and he took it as such.

“They just left you? Like that?” Terra pushed her glasses back up her nose.

“Twenty-three skidoo, right out of town!” She shrugged again. She put up a pretty good front for those who didn’t know her, but it wasn’t something she liked talking about. “My name was Nora, that much I do know. Other than that? Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Valkyrie was the title of a comic book Nora and I found in a burnt out shell of a village we were traveling through to get to combat school. She needed a last name in order to apply and that one appealed.”

“Valkyrie!” Nora spread her hands out dramatically. “Pretty badass, right?” She shot a quick glance at the baby. “Oh, sorry.”

“He’s heard it before,” Saphron said, reaching out to gently tap Adrian’s nose. 

“And Ren wanted to be Ren, so Ren he was.”

Saphron blinked. “Wait, that’s not your name?”

“It is my last name.”

“So you go by your last name?” Terra started to peel another banana, much to Adrian’s clear delight. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.”

“My full name is Lie Ren. I prefer to go by my last name.” He realized she was going to ask, and so he continued before she could. “Lie was what my parents called me. And they are gone. So I would prefer it if others do not.”

“They uh, had it a lot worse than I ever did.” Jaune reached out to grasp both of their hands.

“Did they cheat to get into school, though?” Saphron shot up an eyebrow. “Because we are so going to talk about that.”

“It wasn’t…I wasn’t trying to cheat.” Jaune stared down at the table. “I mean, I cheated, yeah. I used someone else’s application and references to get in. It was wrong, I know. But I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on the school just to mess with them. I wanted to do something that mattered with my life and it was the only way I could think of doing it.”

“It was dangerous, though.” Nora was serious. “We had to fight Grimm on that second day. Students have died that way.” They were silent for a moment, the three of them, remembering Hazel Reinhardt’s rage over his younger sister. “If not for Pyrrha…” she pushed her bowl slowly away from her, refusing to look at either of them.

Jaune’s eyes filled up. “I just wanted to get away.”

Saphron shifted around the table to put her arm around his shoulders. “Was it that bad at home?”

He looked up at her and sniffled. “It all changed after you left, Saph. It’s not that it was bad, not like that. But everyone just expected me to be the same old useless dork Jaune that I had always been. No matter what I did they never saw me as anything different.”

She sighed and pulled him close. “Yeah. I get it. Believe me, I get it.”

“I just wanted to make a fresh start. I thought that if I went there, where nobody knew me, I could reinvent myself.”

“You’re still pretty much a dork,” Nora said, her mouth curving up. “But we love you that way.”

“We do,” he added, and met Jaune’s grateful look with a smile of his own. “Your strategic gifts and your natural leadership abilities were always there. You just needed to get caught up on the combat side of it all.”

“And hello! The Aura side of it all!” Nora pointed at him. “You hadn’t even unlocked your Aura!”

“Enlighten me,” Terra said, wiping Adrian’s hands off with a napkin before handing him another chunk of banana. “I’m still not following what this whole unlocked Aura thing is.”

He let Jaune take over the conversation, with Nora jumping in as well. It was unheard of for a student to enter one of the four academies without having unlocked both their Aura and Semblance; he still wasn’t sure what Jaune had put on his application, seeing as he had barely unlocked his Semblance as it was. They still weren’t sure what all it could do. Amplify other Auras, yes. But what did that mean, though? When Jaune had put his hand on his shoulder on the train and shared his Aura it had felt like a warm summer day, the energy of it delicious on his skin, distracting him from what he was trying to do with his own Semblance until he’d ruthlessly pulled his focus back to himself. Would it feel like that to Nora, though? That nearly somnolent heat? Had it felt like that to Weiss as he was helping her to heal herself? He didn’t know her well enough to feel comfortable asking.

It had opened something, that touch, that connection. He’d felt their Auras physically mingling; it was as if the bulk of Jaune’s solid muscle, the callouses on his hands, the unfamiliar tension in his hips, the weight of those steel-toed boots were layered in and around his own senses. He’d also touched the whirl of Jaune’s mind, quickly assessing each situation, his instincts sharp but somewhat hampered by his still wobbly self-confidence. It wasn’t mind-reading, not exactly. He wasn’t able pick out individual thoughts. More a sense of who Jaune was, physically and mentally. Had Jaune felt anything from him in return? He hadn’t had time to ask him yet.

He’d also felt Jaune’s fierce, all-encompassing love for him in that connection, the strength of it startling him. Oh, that the three of them loved and cared for each other was a given, or at least to his mind. Jaune and Nora were all he had, really, and he loved them without reserve and he’d understood that they felt the same. But he’d felt more in that connection, something he thought Jaune wasn’t sure of, either. Could he ask Jaune? Would he? He hadn’t even figured out this new relationship with Nora yet, although clearly everyone else had thought it was a given. Back in Mistral, before they had battled at Haven Academy, Ruby had gushed on about how cute the two of them were to Yang and Weiss and Yang had even gone so far as to remind Nora, over dinner, to hang a sock on the door, something that the two of them clearly thought was hilarious, despite Weiss’s emphatic eyeroll and Oscar’s inevitable blush when he - or perhaps Professor Ozpin - had realized what she meant.

Ruby and Yang’s uncle had squinted at him over the table, saying nothing, merely taking another swallow out of his ever-present flask, eventually telling the girls to pipe down and change the subject.

Qrow had come up to him the next day, however, motioning him over, sucking on his teeth, staring at him long enough to make him uncomfortable before just up and saying what he was thinking. _“So. You know. Babies are the one thing that you don’t want to do accidentally.”_ He’d scoffed, but his eyes had told a different, sadder story. _“You and Nora there, you using protection?”_

He’d fumbled for an answer, not knowing what to say. _“Uh…well…”_ The truth was that they hadn’t done anything at that point that had warranted it but Ruby’s drunk uncle was the last person he’d wanted to confide in.

Qrow had waved a hand. _“Yeah, yeah, none of my business, I get it.”_ He sighed. _“So look, I was going to stop off at a pharmacy and get you what you needed but knowing my luck,”_ a painful grimace, _“they’d end up having holes in them or something. So here.”_ He’d dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of lien. _“Take this and go get yourself what you need.”_ Before he could protest Qrow had grabbed his hand and pressed the money into it. _“Look, I know the two of you don’t have any family and that means you don’t have any money. If you want to consider it a loan for the sake of your pride then go ahead. But just do me a favor and get what you need because…”_ he trailed off. _“Well, I don’t have to get into it with you, you’re a smart kid.”_

Qrow had left it at that, for which he was profoundly grateful. He’d ended up going to the pharmacy the next day; after all, Qrow had given him the money for it and he didn’t want to use the man’s lien on anything else. They hadn’t used them as yet, however. And he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that, either.

“…and you’ll come too, Ren?” He blinked and focused back in as Jaune said his name.

“Uh…I guess?” He desperately tried to figure out where everyone else was in the conversation. He could go where, exactly?

“Plus we can pick up a few things for ourselves, right?” Nora was grinning at him, knowing full well he hadn’t the first clue as to what they were talking about.

“He always does this, head in the clouds, don’t mind him.” Jaune chuckled. “Nora and I said we’d go to the market, we’re out of milk and Adrian is low on diapers.” He reached behind him and snagged a pen off the counter. “Just write down what you need us to get and we can do it.”

“You sure?” Saphron took a scrap of paper Terra handed her. “I usually just run out to the local market a couple of blocks away.”

Jaune stood up. “It’s no problem. Least we can do.”

“Just tell us where we’re going and we’ll get there.” Nora stood as well. “Come on, Ren.”

As usual, he followed where the two of them went.


	4. Day Three: Home Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Go take your bath.”

“Okay, the spare key is here-” Terra pointed at the brightly painted wooden bowl on the table next to the front door “-if the two of you decide you do want to go out. Please help yourself to anything in the kitchen, and I mean that. If it’s there, eat it. Our house is your house.” She smiled to show she really did mean it. “And do feel free to use the tub. I know I do.”

“Diaper bag, check. Stroller, check. Cuddle Bear, check. The most beautiful baby in the world, check.” Saphron came down the stairs, Adrian in arms, with Nora right behind her. “We’ve got everything we need.” She settled the baby into his stroller and buckled him in, slinging a bag that was at least three times the size of the pack that had taken him all the way from Patch around the stroller’s handles. What did she have in there? A twin no one had told him about?

“Except your brother.” Terra leaned over and called up the stairs. “Jaune! Move it or lose it!”

“Coming!” Jaune clattered down, adjusting a blue sweater that Terra had dug out of somewhere for him. It was a little short in the arms and strained across his shoulders but it wasn’t his hoodie, at least. It was odd to see him in something besides his armor. His jeans were clean and he’d made an effort to brush away the worst of the road grime from his boots, too. “Does my hair look okay?” He’d tried to comb it back. It needed cutting but at least he’d tried. Ren kicked Nora none-too-gently in the ankle when she opened her mouth to say who knew what about it.

“You look very respectable.” Well. More respectable than usual, anyhow. Jaune had never really cared all that much for his appearance.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Saphron asked, finishing her fussing with the stroller.

“They do not want to travel across town to spend the day with my parents, Saphron.” Terra said.

“It’s not that we don’t want to meet them…” Nora squirmed and bumped him with her shoulder, but before he could jump in Terra scoffed.

“I told you both, it’s fine. Don’t nag at them, Saph. I wouldn’t want to either, in their place.” She smiled. “Although you’re both too polite to say so.”

“I’m coming, isn’t that enough?” Jaune checked his hair in the small mirror above the hall table. “Maybe I need a haircut.”

“You think?” Nora got that out there before he could stop her, and Jaune scowled at her.

“Okay, we’re out of here. Ren, Nora, enjoy your peace and quiet. We’ll see you in a few hours.” Terra opened the door and waved her wife out.

“I’ll call you guys and give you a heads up when we’re coming back,” Jaune said with what was probably meant to be a meaningful look but only ended up making him resemble a kid with a poorly kept secret. “So uh…you know. Carry on! Um. Yeah.” There was an awkward moment where the three of them stood there staring each other before Terra’s “Jaune!” broke it up.

“Have a nice visit,” he called down the steps after them as Jaune sprinted to catch up, watching them walk down the sidewalk towards the tram before shutting the door behind him. He and Nora stood there in the entryway, silent.

“So.” She tried for a carefree laugh but it fell flat. “Alone at last. The first time in forever.”

“Since that day outside Guram Village when Jaune and Ruby went into town to shop for supplies and we stayed at the campsite. It was seven months ago.”

“Yeah. Forever.”

“Many things have changed in seven months.”

“You can say that again.”

Another silence where he resisted actually saying it again before he edged his way towards the stairs. “Terra offered me the use of their bathtub. So I was thinking I would take advantage of that.”

She gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher. “We’re home alone and you want to go and take a bath?”

“Yes?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.” She stood there and watched him for a few moments longer before throwing her hands up and walking towards the kitchen.

“What?”

She waved him off without looking. “Go take your bath.”

He stood there for a moment, undecided, waiting to see if she had anything else to say; when she didn’t he made his way up the stairs and into Terra and Saphron’s bedroom. He felt a bit awkward going into their private space but Jaune had brought up over breakfast the glories of their bathtub and had asked if they’d mind if Ren took a bath there. On the one hand he was pleased; it was kind of Jaune to remember he loved baths and to ask for him. On the other hand he was slightly embarrassed to be going somewhere he felt he had no business. He wasn’t family, after all.

He forgot about any awkwardness once he saw the clawfoot tub, however, deep and wide enough for two. It’d been at least ten years since he’d been able to take a bath in anything even remotely this size and he experimented with the spigots until the water was hot enough to immediately start steaming up the mirror and windows. He folded his clothes onto the closed lid of the toilet and slid carefully into the water as it filled, wincing a bit at the temperature, letting his lower limbs take the shock of it before easing his torso in. Too late he realized he should have put his hair up; with a mental shrug he decided to let it go. It could just dry later, then. A sigh escaped him as he let himself relax further, his knees bobbing out of the water as he let his head drift, his hair spooling and tangling around his shoulders. He’d loved baths as a little boy, loved to feel his entire body submerged, holding his breath and opening his eyes to see how the water made everything waver, his mother’s outline blurred into blobs of fuchsia and green. She’d sung him songs as she bathed him, funny little made up ditties about the day he’d had or what they would do the next morning, always smiling.

Nobody had been loved like he had been loved.

_When I go under the water can you still see me?_ he had asked her once, after he’d run out of the breath he’d been holding and had to surface.

_Of course I can,_ she’d replied, tweaking his nose gently. _I can always see my little Lie._

_Even when I_ _’m hiding?_ His disappointment must have shown on his face, because she’d laughed.

_Well, you just need to learn to hide better,_ she said, fetching a towel and helping him out. _It takes practice to become an invisible boy, you know._

_If I practice very hard can I become invisible?_

_I think,_ she said, wrapping him snugly in the towel, _that you could become anything you wanted to be if you only tried._

He’d tried, very hard. He’d watch how his father would walk, crouching down slightly and putting his weight onto his heels and then letting it roll onto his toes, nearly soundless as he moved. Father was a hunter and Lie knew he had to be very quiet when he moved through the forest or else the animals would hear him and run away. He’d practice through the house, heels to toes, trying to be so quiet that Mother wouldn’t know he was there.

_The walk is better but you_ _’re still breathing too loudly,_ Father said one day out of nowhere, and he’d jumped, squeaking in alarm. Father had smiled at him, however, and so he ran straight for him as Father pulled him up into a hug. Father had very strong arms that could hold you very tightly. _Anyone could hear you coming,_ and Father had huffed loudly to show him.

_Oh,_ he’d said, feeling his chin wobble. He’d been working on it to surprise Father and now it was all ruined. Father went down on one knee to look him in the eyes, however.

_Lie, you_ _’re a little boy, and that means you’re still learning. No one expects you to be perfect. Do you want to learn how to breathe more quietly?_ He’d nodded, and Father had smiled again. _Well. First things first, you have to breathe here,_ and he’d tapped low on Lie’s belly.

_How do I breathe there?_ he’d asked, curiosity winning over his dismay.

_Let me show you,_ Father had said, and that’s when Father had started to teach him how to move like a hunter did.

He’d practice all the time; walking with Mother to the market, helping her with the gardening, laying in bed at night, trying to keep his breathing as silent as possible. He’d snuck up on Mother one day when she’d been hanging laundry to dry and she’d dropped the basket as her hands flew to her cheeks, laughing before she hugged him, smelling like the soft white soap she always used. _Oh Lie! You really did startle me! You_ _’re getting very good!_

_Am I an invisible boy yet?_ he’d asked, nearly dancing with joy.

_Almost,_ Mother had said, and had taken him to the market to get a small cake to celebrate.

He’d been an invisible boy the day the strange woman had come to their house to visit Mother. Mother was not expecting her; she’d answered the door with her apron on, wiping flour off of her hands with a towel and her gasp as she saw the woman there didn’t sound happy. The woman was wearing very fancy clothes; fancier than anything he’d ever seen in the village, even on holidays. _Hello An,_ she said, and after a moment Mother stepped backwards and the woman came in, taking off a hat to reveal hair the same shade of pink as Mother’s. The same shade as his good luck stripe. He bit back on his own gasp. He’d never seen anyone else with pink hair; as she turned he saw she had eyes the same color as theirs as well.

_Jun,_ Mother said. Usually when guests came Mother was happy to see them, offering tea and inviting them to sit. She was not doing it for this woman, however, and Lie started to feel nervous. Why was this strange woman with eyes like his different than other guests?

_An,_ the woman replied, looking around the room. _Please tell me you at least have electricity here._

Mother frowned. _Why are you here?_

The woman stiffened. _Aren_ _’t you going to ask me to sit?_

_No,_ Mother said, and he could hardly believe his ears. Mother was never rude to anyone! Mother had the nicest manners of anyone he knew! Even the neighbors called her a lady, something that made Father proud, he could tell.

_An,_ the woman said again, and Mother sighed.

_Fine,_ she said, and waved to a chair, waiting for the other woman to sit before sitting down herself. She did not take off her apron; something else that was different about this visit. Mother always took off her apron if they had guests, always patted at her hair in the small mirror in the hallway. _What do you want?_

_I_ _’ve come here to tell you that Grandmother is dying. She wishes to see you._

Mother smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. _No._

_Have you no honor,_ the woman started, but Mother cut her off with a sharp movement of her hand.

_Let_ _’s not. Grandmother and Mother made it very clear that I was no longer a member of the family. I have been content to leave it at that. I have my own honor, Jun._

The woman looked away. _Not all of us agreed with that decision,_ she said, very quietly, so quietly he hardly heard her.

Mother didn’t answer, however, just stared down at her hands. It was quiet for a long time before the woman looked back at Mother. She was crying, he was surprised to see, and even more surprised to see that Mother was crying as well. _I can_ _’t go back,_ Mother said. _I won_ _’t go back. I took nothing with me when I left and I have taken nothing since. I owe them nothing._

_I will tell them so,_ the other woman said. She reached down to the bag she had brought in with her, pulling out a wrapped gift and putting it on the chair next to her. _I_ _…I brought something for the boy._

Mother frowned. _I don_ _’t -_

_It is from me,_ the woman said. _Not them. I brought it on my own._ She leaned towards Mother. _May I see him?_

Mother didn’t answer for a long time again. _Li wouldn_ _’t like it,_ she finally said.

_Please, An,_ the woman said. _I would like to see him. Just once._

_He_ _’s not here,_ Mother said and he wasn’t sure if she knew he was there or not. _And you can_ _’t be here when Li gets home._

The woman touched her hat. _I tried to be discreet,_ she said. _I walked from outside of the village._

_How did you know where the house was? And how did you know he was a boy?_ Mother was frowning.

The woman sighed. _Mother paid for the information._

_Of course she did,_ Mother answered, her mouth pulled tight.

He stepped forward into the room, invisible boy made visible again. _I am Lie,_ he said, and bowed towards the woman properly, fist to hand as Mother had taught him. _It is my pleasure to meet you._ Mother insisted on nice manners from him. Always.

The woman stared at him, her hand going to her mouth. _Oh An,_ she said. _Oh An._

Mother swallowed. _Lie, this is_ _…_ she opened her mouth and closed it again.

_I am your Aunt Jun,_ the woman said, and she reached her hands out for his, taking them into hers. Her hands had rings on them and were so soft and pretty, with the nails painted a pale lilac color. Nothing like Mother’s.

_I did not know I had an Aunt,_ he said, and Mother gave a little sob. _Mother? Did I say something wrong?_ He didn’t want Mother to cry!

_You did not,_ the woman said, and she let go of a hand to brush her fingers against his good luck pink stripe, just as Mother so often did. _It_ _’s my fault, not yours, Lie._ She smiled at him. _You look very much like your mother, has anyone told you that?_

He nodded. _Everyone says so. But my hair is mostly like Father_ _’s._

She nodded in return. _Yes, you look like your father as well._ She took her hands away and picked up the wrapped present. _I have a gift for you._

_Thank you,_ he replied and glanced towards Mother. _May I take it, Mother?_ She nodded and he took it into his hands. It was a book, he could tell, and he scrunched his toes together in excitement. He loved books.

_Lie,_ Mother said, and she touched his wrist. _Please take it into your room and close the door and stay there until I come for you. You may open the gift there._ She frowned just a little. _However, no being invisible right now. Do you understand me?_

_Yes, Mother_ , he said. Mother gave him a little push towards his room.

_Mind me now, Lie._

_Yes, Mother._ He turned back to this unknown aunt and bowed over the gift clutched to his chest. _Goodbye, Aunt. Thank you for the gift._

_Goodbye, Lie,_ she said, and put a handkerchief to her eyes as she sniffled. _It was very wonderful to meet you._

He went to his room and closed his door, obedient as always. Mother had said he could open his gift and so he did, carefully removing the beautiful paper, pale green with a design of shiny silver spirals covering it, saving the silver ribbon as well. It was a large book with color illustrations, all about the world, maps and photographs of far off cities and their residents, of waterfalls and glaciers, sand dunes and forests. He turned the pages, enthralled, forgetting to listen at the door, not even noticing when his aunt left, only realizing that Mother had been crying when she finally came to his room, her eyes red and swollen. She came and sat on his bed next to him, running her hand along his good luck stripe.

_I did not know my sister was coming today,_ she said. _She won_ _’t be coming again._

_She won_ _’t?_

Mother shook her head. _I_ _…_ she was quiet for a moment and turned the pages of his book until they came to the city of Mistral. _My family did not want me to marry your father. They were very angry when I did and told me I was no longer their daughter._

He didn’t know what to think of this. _I don_ _’t understand. Why didn’t they want you to marry Father?_ He couldn’t think of a single reason. Father was wonderful! He was brave and strong and handsome and the town’s best hunter, everyone knew it.

Mother sighed. _It_ _’s hard to explain, Lie. My family is very wealthy and important and they live a very different life in Mistral than we live here. And your father’s family was…well. Your father’s father was the gamekeeper on my family’s country estate._

_Is that like a hunter?_

She smiled, just a little. _Very close. Your grandmother died when your father was born and your grandfather died two years before you were born. Your father became the gamekeeper in his place. And he and I fell in love but my family did not want me to marry a gamekeeper._ Mother looked angry at that.

_Why not?_

_In the Kingdom of Mistral things are done a certain way. Especially in the city of Mistral._ She tapped the photograph in his book. _And someone from my family marrying someone from your father_ _’s family isn’t supposed to happen. That’s why, when your father and I decided to marry, we left Mistral with some other people who agreed with us to start our own cities. And maybe, one day, our own kingdom as well._ She smiled, and kissed his forehead. _We wanted a new life, a different life, especially when I found out I was going to have a baby. A new life for you, Lie. A better life._ She held out her arm then and he snuggled up to close to her. _I love you so very much._

_And I you, Mother._

Later that night, he was awoken by the sound of his parents speaking; his father’s voice angry, his mother’s soothing. He slid out of bed and padded out of his room, into the doorway of their room. _Father? Mother?_

They both turned and Mother came towards him. _Oh Lie, did we wake you? I_ _’m so sorry._

_Never mind,_ his father said, and gently tousled his hair. _Mother and I will be quiet. Go back to bed now._

_Are you angry, Father? h_ e asked, and Father scooped him up into his arms. _Are you angry at me? Or Mother?_

_Not at your mother nor you, son. Just angry about things that happened long ago._

_Didn_ _’t you tell me that it’s best to let old things go, Father?_

Father smiled at him. _So I did. So how about I take you back to bed and then let them go, what do you think?_

_I think that_ _’s a good idea! Almost as good as having pancakes for breakfast!_

Father laughed then, and Mother as well. _Is that a hint?_ Father made the best pancakes in the world and so he nodded enthusiastically. _All right then, pancakes for breakfast it is. But first bed for you!_

Ren brought his hand out of the bathwater to wipe his tears away before sinking back under the water entirely. He missed them, so very much. He knew what Father had told him, all those years ago, was true: It was best to let old things go. He hadn’t done that those weeks ago in Kuroyuri; he’d been reckless and stupid with his emotions, nearly getting himself killed. But the Grimm who’d murdered his parents was gone now and that, at least, he felt at peace with. He opened his eyes under the water, his sight blurred but trying in vain to focus on the blobs of orange and navy blue moving closer towards him.

He erupted out of the water, his forehead knocking painfully into hers, leaning down over him. “Nora!”

“Ow! What was that for?” She rubbed at her brow. “You’ve got a really hard head, you know that?”

“What are you doing?” His hands automatically went to cover himself.

“I brought sandwiches.”

“Nora! I’m in the tub!”

“I noticed.” She started to smirk.

“I’m not dressed!”

Her smirk broadened as she shot a non-too-subtle glance down the length of him. “I noticed that, too.”

“Nora!”

“Ren!” she mimicked back, grinning. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“When we were children.” He tried to shift himself unobtrusively but even the best invisible boy couldn’t manage that in a bathtub. All he managed to do was send up another wave of water, thoroughly soaking the bathmat.

“I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.” Despite his best intentions he started to blush, and she loved it, of course. “Are you turning pink all over? I win!”

“It’s not a contest,” he mumbled, but he didn’t know why he bothered. For Nora, just about everything was a contest.

“Here,” she said, and balanced the plate of sandwiches next to the tub. “I’ll turn around so I can’t see. And I won’t even peek.” She sat on top of his clothes on the toilet seat and turned herself around so as not to see him either directly or in the mirror. “Much.”

“Nora,” he pleaded but she ignored him by fumbling behind her, managing to swipe a sandwich.

“I already ate two of these,” she said with her mouth full. “I’ll eat the rest too, so better get to it.”

It was not, he knew, an idle threat, so he took one and nibbled at the edges. Egg salad. He loved egg salad.

“So do you want to do something about this or not?” she asked through crumbs, and then swallowed. “Because I’m not sure when we’re going to be alone again.”

He frowned. “This?”

She waved her hand around. “This. Me. You. Stuff. Bedroom stuff, you know.”

He started to put his half-eaten sandwich down, yanking it back up as he realized he was about to give it a dunking. “Do you want to?”

She turned then, and gave him a look. “Gee, I wonder.”

“Oh.”

She frowned at him. “Don’t you want to?”

He didn’t answer right away, looking down at his hands, soft and wrinkled from the water. Didn’t he want to? His body certainly did, there was no question of that. It was getting more insistent about it by the second, in fact. He wasn’t sure about the inevitable fallout, however. It would change things in their friendship, of course; just kissing each other the way they’d been doing over the past few weeks had done that already. Would it be for better or worse? He wasn’t sure, and he loathed taking risks. He liked knowing exactly what the odds were, weighing both sides equally, thinking things through, coming to a measured decision. It’s who he was, who he’d always been and sometimes it meant he got stuck, he knew that, but he left the impulsiveness to Nora, who always leapt before she looked. His Nora, brave and beautiful, so powerful, electric in every sense. He’d experienced terror in his life but nothing like the utter desolation he’d felt in those few moments after the lightning had struck her the first time and she’d lain there unconscious as he called her name, his heart pounding so hard he couldn’t hear anything else over the sound of it, cradling her in his arms, insensible with fear. He thought he’d lost her and he knew right then, clear as anything, that he had no desire to live without her. He’d held on to her, too desperate to cry, even, and then she’d opened her eyes wide, gasped in a breath and shouted, _Woo! This is the best!_ before tearing herself out of his arms to leap around, crowing as her Semblance kicked in with a vengeance. He’d sat back on his heels, still unable to breathe properly and she’d -

The water swelled up again as she pushed down on his shoulders, moving in to kiss him and he brandished his half-eaten sandwich at her, some egg dropping into the tub. “We shouldn’t do this here!”

“Whatever,” she said, leaning forward to take a bite of his sandwich before taking it out of his hand and putting it back on the plate. “What’s to stop us?”

He had no rational answer to that. Technically speaking, rationality had, for the most part, taken a hike. “Uh…”

“Exactly. So I’m going to kiss you now.” Which she did, Nora Valkyrie being a woman of her word. She tasted like egg salad which was actually okay in his book. They were getting better at this whole kissing thing. The first time they’d tried, after they’d dropped off Ruby’s uncle at the hospital in Mistral and had finally found an inn, they were both so inexperienced that they’d clashed their teeth together unpleasantly, quickly breaking apart. Not the most auspicious beginning, to be sure, but they’d been practicing ever since.

“Not in the tub,” he managed to get out between kisses. “Not in their bathroom!”

“Where, then? The bedroom?” She didn’t wait for him to answer, pulling back and tugging at whatever part of his naked body she could grasp until he was half out of the tub. He noticed, with perfect clarity, that the front of her shirt had gotten wet as she’d kissed him and had gone fairly translucent, showing her bra underneath. “You’re wet,” he said, Lie Ren, Master of the Obvious, and she snorted.

“No, you’re wet.”

He reached for a towel, intending to safely wrap it around himself but she grabbed his hand and pulled him along after her, through the bedroom and across the hall to where the guest bedroom was. Jaune had dumped what looked like the entire contents of his pack on the bed, which was typical Jaune, who always left a trail behind him wherever he went. Nora grabbed at the coverlet and just yanked the entire thing off of the bed and sent it flying, Jaune’s things right along with it.

“That was Jaune’s stuff,” he said, starting to reach for the coverlet but Nora gave him a little shove towards the bed.

“Fuck Jaune,” she muttered, and knocked him down to lay atop him as he shoved with his legs to try and get the both of them balanced.

“What’s wrong with Jaune?”

“I don’t want to talk about Jaune. He can have his own time with you,” she said, and before he could work out what she’d meant by that she was kissing him again and any thoughts he may or may not have had about Jaune went by the wayside. Nora was a very insistent kisser. A good thing, too, because if they’d waited for him to get up the courage to make the first move they’d both probably have died virgins. Not that they were out of danger of that yet but he had high hopes which were getting higher every second, right along with -

“You’re thinking so loud I can practically hear you,” she complained, pulling away to roll over and sit up, ignoring his little whimper of distress. She wriggled out of her jacket, sending it sailing to the floor, quickly followed by her blouse. Her bra had a little pink bow in the center. He’d seen it before, although not on her. Pyrrha had taken her, not long before she died, for what she’d called A Girl’s Day Out and the two of them had come back with pink bags full of mysteries, which Jaune had promptly started digging through, giving his opinion on the various lingerie they’d bought. Nora had happily sorted through her own and discussed it with Jaune while he and Pyrrha had nearly died of mortification, Pyrrha snatching her own bag away and disappearing into the dorm bathroom while he’d made a quick escape to the school library to read up on traditional barrel making until he’d bored himself into not thinking about bras with lace and pink bows.

“I like that bra,” he blurted out and she grinned at him.

“Take it off, then,” she said and waggled her eyebrows.

“Uh…” he managed and she just laughed and did it herself, thankfully. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her. Despite the fooling around they’d done since they’d arrived in Mistral he hadn’t actually seen her like this, not in the light of day. He was fair-skinned himself but he had nothing on the pallor of her skin, a smooth porcelain only marred by the visible mapwork of her veins through her breasts and wrists. Her nipples and aureoles were of such a pale pink as to be nearly translucent and his mouth was suddenly dry, his heart pounding. He wanted to touch her but wasn’t sure if he dared. Nora took care of that, however, grabbing his left hand and placing it on her breast.

“They don’t bite, you know,” she said, still laughing, and he had to smile back at her.

“Sorry. I’m not very good at this.”

“Like I am?”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, letting his Semblance wash over him. Calm, calm, everything was calm, he was calm, Nora was calm, everything was calm.

“No, don’t do that!” Nora grabbed his shoulder and shook it. “Don’t do your thing!”

He opened his eyes again and caught her hand in his. “Nora, I don’t want to do this.” She recoiled, hurt making her eyes widen and he pulled her closer. “No, that’s not what I meant! I mean, I do want to do this, believe me I do, I just mean that I don’t want to do this here. As in, this specific place.”

She glanced around the bedroom. “What, you want to do it downstairs on the sofa?”

He sat up, trying to adjust himself. His Semblance calmed his emotions but it didn’t do a single thing for biology, as he knew from vast past experience. “This isn’t our house.”

She scoffed. “Nowhere’s our house, Ren, in case you forgot.”

“I know that. But it feels odd and uncomfortable to me. I can’t stop thinking that we shouldn’t be doing it.”

“Well if you’d turn off your Semblance I bet I could make you stop thinking about it!”

He pulled her closer, just so he wouldn’t have to look at her breasts. His Semblance was quickly hitting its limits. “You probably could but then I’d just feel guilty afterward.”

She shoved at him, her eyes filling up. “Now you’re making me feel stupid.”

He wrapped his arms around her tightly. “Nora, I really want to. As in, really, really want to. But I don’t want our first time to be something fast and desperate in Jaune’s sister’s house, wondering if they’re on their way back yet, trying to quickly clean up and make it look like we weren’t doing anything.” She turned her head away from him, mouth pulled down in a frown. “I want it to be something special. I don’t want to be worrying the whole time. I don’t” and here he nudged at her chin to turn her back towards him, “want to feel like I have to use my Semblance. Both of us deserve better than that.”

“Sometimes I hate your stupid Semblance,” she muttered, and a single tear tracked down her cheek.

“Sometimes I hate my stupid Semblance too,” he replied, and that was a lie. Most of the time he hated it. It was rarely useful in a fight and he relied on it too much for himself, he knew that. He leaned forward until his forehead rested on hers. “I have an idea. Can you give me another day or two?”

She pulled back, suspicious. “What kind of an idea?”

He smiled at her. “A surprise kind of idea.” She loved surprises and as he’d hoped, she started to smile.

“Will it be a good surprise?”

“The best surprise.”

“Will it be a just you and me kind of surprise?”

He nodded gravely. “A just you and me surprise. No one else.”

“Will it be a just you and me naked kind of surprise?”

His face started to heat up but he kept going. “A just you and me naked kind of surprise, yes.”

“I like the sound of that, mister!” She dropped her head into his shoulder. “You’re sure it’s not because it’s me?” she whispered, and he buried his face into her hair.

“There’s never been anyone but you,” he whispered back, and he had to give his Semblance an extra push so as not to yank the skirt right off of her. She still had her boots on and the idea of that was doing some serious damage to his calm as well. “It’s always been you.”

“Promise?” she said, her voice small and hesitant the way it had been when she was a child and had been frightened of everything and he closed his eyes and breathed her in. He'd show her how much he loved her, if she would just give him enough time. He loved her impulsiveness, he did, but sometimes he needed more time.

“I promise, Nora. I promise." He could feel her bare breasts pushing against his chest and it took all of his resolve to hold himself still. "It's important to me to do this the right way."

"I trust you," she replied and that was all he needed to hear.


	5. Day Four: Distractions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You mean like a chess club?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a trigger warning for this chapter. I've put it at the end notes to avoid spoilers; please click on the link if you need it.

“Why haven’t we heard anything?” Jaune was pacing the circumference of the living room, his steps hard and furious. “They told us they expected to be back today.”

“Today isn’t yet over,” he said, but didn’t know why he bothered. Jaune, when in one of his moods, wouldn’t be coaxed out of it until it had run its course.

“I don’t think wearing a hole in the floor is going to help,” Nora said from her spot sprawled on the rug, helping Adrian to stack some blocks. “I’m sure they’re okay, Jaune.”

“It’s been four days!”

“They only sent out the rescue plane forty-eight hours ago,” he clarified, putting a bookmark in place before he closed his book. “It’s quite a distance and while the shuttles are faster than trains they do have certain speed limits.”

“How hard can it be? Fly out there, pick them up, fly back.” Jaune smacked a fist into his other hand. He and Nora exchanged a look. “This is my fault for agreeing to separate like that.”

“Jaune, we needed to separate. Who would have protected those passengers except you two?” Nora took the block Adrian handed her and placed it on top of the heap.

“You could have stayed with them-” Jaune started, but shut his mouth with an audible snap when Nora shot a fierce look his way.

“I go where Ren goes. You know that,” she said, and Jaune immediately backed off.

“No, no, I know that. I didn’t mean…” he shoved a hand through his hair and groaned. “I just…where are they? It was snowing there!”

“I guess Weiss knows how to handle snow,” Nora said, her tone doubtful.

“I don’t think I would count on that,” he said. “It is my understanding that Weiss did not spend much time as a child exposed to the elements.” She’d even joked about it once when it had gotten fairly cold during a scrimmage at Beacon. Or at least he’d thought she was joking. With Weiss it was often hard to tell.

“Yeah, and think about Blake! She’s from Menagerie! It doesn’t get all that cold down there!” Jaune came perilously close to knocking into the block tower with his foot and Nora gave his ankle a warning smack.

He shrugged. “If anything I would think Blake would endure the elements more hardily than the rest of her team.” Blake, he knew, had seen more of the world than the rest of her teammates, Ruby’s prior year with his team included. Like himself and Nora, she’d done more than just attend combat school for her skills.

“You guys need to get out of this house,” Saphron said, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, her arms folded. “You’re going stir crazy here.”

Jaune threw his arms out dramatically. “Go where?”

Saphron shrugged. “I don’t know. Go and do stuff that normal teenagers do? See a movie? Go to the mall?” At their blank looks she threw her hands out in the exact same way as Jaune. “Hit up a club or something?”

Jaune frowned. “You mean like a chess club?”

Saphron’s mouth dropped. “Chess club?” Her lip curled up as she shook her head in mock despair. “Chess club, he says. I have failed you as an older sister.”

“You mean a club, club, right?” Nora brightened. “I’ve never actually been to a club, club.”

“You’ve never been clubbing?” Saphron was aghast. “How is that even possible? Come on, they have to have clubs in Vale!”

“They do, but first year students had curfews,” Nora said. “And then there was the whole Vytal Festival and then you know, the school sort of blew up…so no, we’ve never been.” She bounced up from the floor. “We should do it!” Adrian goggled up at her, reaching out a hand and Nora grabbed him into her arms, dancing around the living room with him. “You want to come with us? DANCING BABY!” Adrian chortled as Nora made faces at him, jiggling him up and down.

“I don’t think we should be dancing at a time like this,” Jaune started, and Nora whipped herself and Adrian around to give him another glare.

“At a time like what?”

“We still don’t know if Ruby is okay!”

“And everyone else, of course,” he said, trying to put a damper on his irritation. Jaune knew full well that Ruby was not alone, even if all of his focus was on her.

Saphron surprised him by jumping in. “Jaune, she’s with her team, right? Her actual team.”

Jaune’s face shuttered. “Right. Her real team.”

Nora stopped her dancing to wrap her free arm around Jaune’s waist, looking up at him. “She was always on loan, we knew that.” Her voice was quiet. “She’s not ours to keep.”

“I know that,” Jaune barked, but his eyes started to fill up.

“Jaune,” Nora started, but then looked to him for help. Nora had never handled Jaune’s volatile feelings very well, something which had caused the both of them to bang heads more than once. Jaune was too emotional for practical Nora and Nora was too brusque for Jaune’s sensitivity. Pyrrha, always tactful, had often stepped in to smooth it out, but it was all up to him nowadays. He put his arm around Jaune’s shoulder and Nora backed away, sitting back down with Adrian and the blocks.

“How does it help us to just sit here and worry?” Jaune took in a breath to protest but he put a finger to Jaune’s lips. “Jaune. We can do nothing. I know you are not comfortable with that feeling. I am not precisely comfortable with it either.”

“Or me!”

“However, your sister does have a valid point. We are accomplishing nothing for Ruby and the rest by spending our time imagining why we have not heard back from them yet. It only serves to make us more agitated. I think the suggestion that we could do something to distract ourselves is a good one.” Both Jaune and Nora could use a little distraction. Or a lot. Jaune was fretting and Nora was bored and sooner, rather than later, the two of them would snap. He’d seen it happen too many times before.

“I don’t know.” Jaune’s look was turning more mulish by the second and he bit back on a sigh. The last thing he wanted to do with his evening was spend it trying to coax Jaune into a better mood.

Saphron shrugged. “No worries, Jaune. You can stay home while Ren and Nora go out. I was going to see what was on TV once I’d put Adrian down, wait for Terra to get home, you can hang with me.” She turned away from Jaune to grin at Nora. “So, you going to wear that or do you want to raid my closet?”

“A raid!” Nora sprung up again, returning the grin. “What do you have in pink? Ooooh! What do you have in leather?”

Saphron scooped up Adrian. “I don’t know about pink but girl, I have an entire closet full of leather. It’s all yours for the taking.” She caught his eye and gave him a deliberate wink before heading towards the stairs. “The offer goes for you as well, Ren. I think we can find you some different shoes, at least. You don’t want to go clubbing in boots like those, that’s a good way to lose a toe. And maybe we can do something with your hair, hmm?” She purposefully thrust Adrian into his uncle’s arms before heading up the stairs, Nora chattering on about leather and Saphron detailing what she had that might suffice. He shot Jaune a glance; his arms were full of his nephew, his chin thrust out sullenly. He wavered for a moment before heading up the stairs as well. It had been masterfully done by Saphron; there was nothing Jaune hated more than feeling left out. Stood to reason his favorite sister would know that as well.

“I can do his hair, thank you very much Ms. Stick Your Nose In It Saphron Terra-Arc,” Jaune muttered behind him and he heard the sofa creak in protest as Jaune threw himself and Adrian down onto it. “Your mother could mind her own beeswax.”

“Guh-bawh,” Adrian agreed, and he smiled to himself as he followed the sound of Nora’s laughter down the hall.

“He’ll come,” Saphron said to him as he stood in her bedroom doorway, trying not to wince as Nora gleefully rooted through her closet, occasionally grabbing something and holding it out in front of her before the mirror.

“You’re very good at this,” he said.

“Plenty of practice,” she replied. “He’s my favorite.” She turned to Nora. “Have at it, okay? You can borrow whatever you want from my side, it’s fine.” Nora flashed her a double thumbs up and Saphron gently steered him across the hall into the guest bedroom, leaving the door open a crack. “You know, I like her but she’s…”

“Loud?” he offered, and smiled.

“I was going to go with exuberant, but loud works too.”

“Mmm.”

She perched herself on the bed, which he had thankfully both cleared off and made that morning. “Look, can I level with you?”

“Yes?” He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be leveled but he could see she was going to do it anyhow. One of these days he was going to figure out why people asked him things when they really didn’t want him to answer, but it was clearly not that day.

“About Jaune, okay? The thing is, I think a lot of people assume he’s as openly emotional as he is because he has seven sisters, but that’s not it. None of the rest of us are like that, it’s all him. He’s always been like that, every feeling he has, right on the surface.” She gestured towards the single chair in the room and he sat down. “My parents always accepted him for who he was, encouraged him, let him have his emotions.” She met his eyes. “I think you understand that about him.”

He thought about this. “I try to understand him.”

“You’re very accepting, I’ve been watching you.” She shoved her hair back. “The entire Arc family, we’re all pretty protective of him.” She was quiet for a moment, before giving him a look he didn’t quite understand. “You know he likes you, right?”

“I hope so. I am very fond of him as well.”

She huffed out a chuckle. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, like like, you know. A crush. Probably more.”

“Ah.” He wasn’t sure if he agreed with her or not but wasn’t about to discuss anyone’s feelings with her, including his own.

She exhaled noisily. “Although I’m not sure he gets that he does. He’s kind of clueless about that kind of thing. Like, you’d think he could figure out his own feelings about someone but in my experience, he just sort of fumbles along.” She tilted her head towards him. “Although I’m guessing you know that about him by now too.”

He was careful with his answer. “Much like Nora and myself, Jaune is perhaps better in some social situations than others.”

“I like this jacket,” Nora yelled from the bedroom, and he and Saphron exchanged a look.

“I think your girl there knows what’s up, though.” Saphron groaned dramatically and massaged at her temples. “Terra would let me have it if she heard me talking about this. She told me to mind my own business.”

_Beeswax,_ he thought, but kept it to himself. “Nora and I have been together for many years now. Until Jaune and Pyrrha it was always just the two of us. It’s taken some adjustment on both of our parts to get used to someone else being part of what was always our team.”

She looked past him, out the window. “He never did have friends, growing up. When he was really small it didn’t matter but as he got older he got bullied. Don’t get me wrong, Arcs look out for each other.” Her smile was grim. “Mess with Jaune, mess with his sisters, you know? We looked out for him.”

“I well believe it.”

“Was he bullied at Beacon?” When he didn’t answer, she glanced back at him and frowned. “That’s a yes, isn’t it? Damn it! I knew it.”

“Mmm,” he replied, as noncommittal as possible. If she wanted to know, she could ask Jaune.

She nodded slowly before sighing. “I can’t really say that I’m surprised.” A wry smile. “And I probably shouldn’t have asked. Thank you for not telling me to fuck off.”

“I’d like to think that if I had an older sister that she would be as caring as you are.”

She laughed then. “Jaune once told me that you had the nicest manners he’d ever seen and he wasn’t wrong, was he? You’re quite the diplomat.”

“Mmm.” His mother used to say that honey caught more flies than vinegar and in his experience, she wasn’t wrong. Not to mention that with Nora around, he had always fallen naturally into the good cop position. For the most part he was content there. Although not, perhaps, in a bedroom with Jaune’s inquisitive and fairly determined older sister.

They sat for a time in an uneasy silence, where he waited for her to either say something else or leave, before she took in a deep breath. _Here it comes._ He should have known better than to think she’d leave before getting what she wanted out of him. This was Jaune’s sister, after all. Jaune was like a dog with a bone when it came to something he wanted. He never let it go.

“Okay, at the risk of being really nosy, can I ask you something else? And you can tell me you don’t want to talk about it, of course. It’s just…” She sighed. “He’s changed, you know?” A dismissive flick of her hand. “Well, obviously, I haven’t lived with him for five years now, I wouldn’t expect him to be the same Jaune he was when he was fourteen and I left home. That’s not what I mean. He just seems sort of angry, kind of short-tempered now. And he wasn’t like that before. And you and Nora, you’ve been with him pretty much twenty-four seven for the past two years now, so if anyone would know it would be you.”

“I suppose,” he said slowly. He did not like the way this conversation was going. What was it about Arcs including him in discussions he wanted no part of?

“Is it because of what happened at Beacon? He used to call me pretty regularly, fill me in on what was going on with classes, you guys, that sort of thing. Not that he told me about bullying or anything like that, but like I said, that’s not surprising. He’s never wanted anyone to know about that kind of thing.” She made a face. “And not that he told me he cheated to get in, either.” A snort of laughter. “Honestly, I’m not sure at this point how much of the story I was actually getting. The more I hear the three of you talk the more I realize he was kind of bullshitting me a lot.”

“Mmm.”

“Look, I’m not asking for state secrets or anything and I appreciate you don’t want to talk about him when he’s not here. Believe me, I really do. Just…I don’t even know how you all got on the same team, even. He talked about the three of you all the time and it was clear he thought the world of you but he also made it sound like he was a functioning member of the team and that wasn’t the case at all, was it?”

He considered what he felt comfortable telling her. “We were a team that baffled everyone. Coming into our class at Beacon, everyone knew Pyrrha.” He smiled at the memory. “Everyone but Jaune, that is. In terms of pure fighting prowess and knowledge of the Huntsman arts she was so far ahead of the rest of us that at the time it seemed rather foolish to team her up with a group of her fellow first-years.”

“She was from Argus, you know. Hometown girl. She was very famous here, believe me.”

“Mmm. And then there was Nora. Her Semblance is very, very powerful. She takes in electricity and stores it in her muscles. It makes her incredibly strong and she’s tough and utterly fearless in battle. You’ve seen her hammer and let me assure you, if she hits you with it, you will go down. I’ve seen her take out Grimm with one shot only. Add to that that she is excellent at taking direction in a fight and you have a Huntress who can hit hard and follow orders. Which is not as frequent a combination as you might think.”

“She’s so tiny, though!”

“Appearances, in Nora’s case, are extremely deceiving.”

“And you?”

“My Semblance is quite rare in that it is only defensive and can only be used against Grimm. It was completely useless in our battles at the Vytal Festival, for example; that’s why Pyrrha and Nora were the ones to go on to the semi-finals.”

“Yeah, Terra and I watched them, of course.” She rolled her eyes. “It was pretty clear Jaune wasn’t up to the rest of you, trust me. Even to someone who doesn’t know all that much about Huntsmen.” Her eyes narrowed. “I think you’re better than you give yourself credit for.”

He shrugged at that. Like any good Huntsman, he knew his own weaknesses and strengths. “My Aura is not very robust and it wears out rapidly compared to others. In order to compensate, I have trained very hard in hand-to-hand combat. Stormflower - my weapons - are mostly useful in close range as well.”

“Jaune told me back when you were in school that you were like a ninja. He said you were very, very fast and flexible and could do all sorts of acrobatics and use nearly anything you could get your hands on as a weapon. He was very impressed.”

He felt his face heat up. “Ah.”

“Oh, this is the one, right here!” Nora shouted from the bedroom and the two of them automatically glanced at the door.

“Do I want to know what my side of the closet looks like right now?”

He shook his head solemnly. “You do not.”

She grimaced, but continued. “And Jaune?”

Again, he considered before he spoke. It was a conversation she should be having with her brother, not him. Although he’d lay odds that if she’d tried, Jaune would have managed to weasel his way out of it, as usual. “As Jaune himself has told you, when he arrived at Beacon he had no combat training and no access to his Aura. Nevertheless, the Headmaster saw fit to allow him to stay. Pyrrha was able to unlock his Aura for him, which is something that normally only well-trained and seasoned Huntsmen can do, and certainly not all of them. Pyrrha was a prodigy in every way. But even with his Aura unlocked he couldn’t access his Semblance until just about a month ago. He did that while saving someone’s life. And as he said earlier, we are still not sure what his Semblance is capable of, but I believe it will, with time and knowledge and training, become extremely powerful. He has worked very hard on his combat skills, both at Beacon as well as on the road with us. There has been an astonishing improvement.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, he always was stubborn about getting what he wanted.”  She nodded to herself. “And he was your leader, despite all of that?”

“He’s a brilliant tactician and an excellent leader,” he replied, and he had no problem telling her that. “I believe that Headmaster Ozpin saw it in him from the very first and that is why he let him stay.”

“He’s always had issues with self-confidence.”

“Mmm.” He wasn’t going to touch that one, even though he knew it to be true.

“So Pyrrha was experienced, Nora is good at killing things, you’re some sort of ninja and Jaune directs the fights?”

He scoffed. “We were not expected to do well as a team, quite frankly. I believe the professors at the academy had their doubts about us.” He stared down at his hands. “We are not the first team to lose a member but it has impacted us quite deeply. Nora and I have some experience with loss, however. I do not believe Jaune has.”

She shook her head. “No. Our grandfather died when he was twelve but he was an old man, and sick. It wasn’t the same.”

“Jaune blames himself.” The moment it was out of his mouth he regretted it. It felt like going behind Jaune’s back, even if it was with his favorite sister. Before he could lose his courage he continued, however. “He has tortured himself endlessly over it, even though there was nothing he could have done that would have changed the outcome.” He met her eyes. “Nora and I are very worried. I don’t know if you can help us. But we would be grateful if you could.”

She leaned towards him as her expression gentled. “You really are his best friend, aren’t you? Not just because you’re teammates.”

“We make unlikely friends, I suppose. But Nora and I do as well.”

She watched him. “I was a real party girl when Terra met me. I drank too much, got into a little too much trouble. She wasn’t like that at all, she’s the oldest, very responsible, did well at school. The reason she’s always working late is because she’s the best tech they’ve got there.” He didn’t think her half-smile was meant for him. “I don’t think anybody expected us to hook up, never mind get married and start a family. But here we are. It works that way sometimes.”

“Mmm.” If anything, he supposed people would assume that he and Blake would be closer than they were. Both of them were studious, quiet, and had similar combat backgrounds. He didn’t dislike Blake, but he’d never felt any particular affection for her, either. The months they’d spent traveling had only cemented both his affection and admiration for Ruby and he’d always enjoyed Yang quite a great deal, which seemed to surprise some people. He had tended to avoid Weiss as much as possible but he wasn’t alone in that, either. Although she had certainly seemed somewhat changed when they finally reconnected in Mistral. Not quite as arch, less petulant, more humble about her background. He hadn’t minded having her around, which was a change from when they were back in school.

“Yell at him more.”

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Saphron nudged his foot with her own. “Jaune gets stuck in his head a lot. Sometimes you need to remind him he’s not alone. He knows that you and Nora are his teammates, but I’m not sure he actually believes it, you know?” She gestured with her hands. “It’s the difference between what his head knows and what his heart feels. Does that make sense?” At his nod, she continued. “It’s just how he is, it’s how he’s always been, that whole emotions on the surface thing. His head is so damn smart when he can get past all his feelings.” Her mouth firmed up as her fingers dug into her thighs. “Yell at him more. Don’t let him forget what he means to you, not for a second. Don’t let him dwell in all of his negativity, because those negative feelings, that’s where we lose him.” She leaned back. “That’s the best advice I can give you.”

He considered this for a time as Jaune’s sister stood and placed her foot next to his, frowning slightly before leaving the room. She wasn’t wrong; when Jaune used his head he was the innovative and strong leader he and Nora depended on. And yes, sometimes Jaune’s emotions were overwhelming and awkward and difficult to deal with. But they were part of what made Jaune who he was. If the idea was that in order to make a truly great leader you had to put aside your feelings he wasn’t sure he agreed. He’d been doing that for years now, ever since that terrible day when he’d lost everything. He’d been using his Semblance to push down all of his own emotion and all it’d ever done for him was leave him outside of everyone else, unable to fully connect with anyone, even Nora. He was unable to deal with his feelings any other way. It wasn’t a good place to be, only thinking with his head, never his heart, he knew that. He’d known it for awhile, now.

Could he and Jaune find some sort of middle ground for themselves, some sort of balance? Head and heart. Intellect and emotion. He sighed and closed his eyes, recognizing the ridiculousness of trying to use his head to figure out how to jump start his heart. Maybe he could have Nora hit him with Magnhild. That might do it.

His eyes opened as Saphron returned, a pair of ankle boots in hand. She waved them at him. “I think these might fit you. They’re Terra’s, but they were too big when she ordered them and she never got around to exchanging them. Even after the pregnancy they still don’t really fit.” She grinned. “She’s got herself a pair of monster big feet. Do not tell her I said that.”

He took them and turned them over in his hands. They were black leather with a bit of a stacked heel, decorated with three straps with silver buckles, toes considerably pointed, with a red leather lining on the upraised cuff that was almost a perfect match for the red lining of his collar. They were exceedingly unpractical and would be terrible in a fight.

He wanted to put them on and never take them off.

“Do they fit?”

He unlaced his own boot and slid it off, setting it neatly to the side before holding the ankle boot next to his foot. Without a word Saphron handed over a pair of white socks. He pulled one on and then pushed his foot into the ankle boot, quickly buckling it closed, standing up and shifting his foot about. It was slightly snug across the instep, but nothing too terrible and certainly something that, with time, would stretch and soften. Other than that, it fit. He looked over at her and smiled.

“Nice!” She gestured towards the other one and he put it on, wriggling his toes and moving about the bedroom in them, getting used to the feel of something different on his feet. “If they fit and you like them, you can have them.”

“Aren’t they Terra’s?”

“Yeah, but she won’t mind, I promise. Like I said, they’ve never been worn. They’ve just been collecting dust.” She stepped back and gave him a critical once-over. “So you could take off the black turtleneck, lose the silver knee things on the pants, lose the sleeves and I think you’d be all set for clubbing.”

His hands went up to clasp opposite wrists. “I need to leave these on.” He hadn’t meant to say it with as much force as he had. No use hoping she hadn’t noticed; her eyebrows shot up.

“Those things specifically or just something covering your arms?”

He swallowed. “I keep my forearms covered.” He thought about saying something with regards to fighting but Jaune’s sister was by no means stupid; she’d immediately see that his cuffs were decorative rather than useful.

“Right,” she said, nodding. “Hang on.” She left the room again.

He listened: _Nora_ _’s laughter while Saphron commented on her choice of jacket; a child counting loudly from the house next door as other children scampered and giggled; the faint strain of a piano being played with more enthusiasm than skill; the click and muffled thud of blocks stacked precariously._ Such normal, carefree sounds, slices of lives lived in safety and warmth, content with what they had. He’d lived that way once upon a time. He closed his eyes and reminded himself to breathe, let his Semblance soothe him.

Saphron came back in, holding a pair of long black leather vambraces, somewhat similar to Jaune’s, but clearly meant for show rather than protection. Like the boots, they had three silver buckles each. “Would these do?” Her smile was gentle. “These are mine, incidentally. From those long, lost party girl days I was telling you about. You can try them on, see if they work for you. If so, they’re all yours.” She backed up towards the door. “I’ll let you have your privacy.”

“Thank you,” he said, and she gave him a little nod and closed the door behind her. The horizontal scars on his forearms were not so noticeable these days; they’d faded to a dull pink, helped along by the salve that Nora had insisted on putting on them, long after the shallow slashes themselves had healed. His thirteenth year had been brutal; Nora’s Aura and Semblance hadn’t unlocked yet and he had refused to go to combat school without her, instead studying under a sensei whose idea of training had been to break him down until nothing of his Aura was left and then remold him. The sensei had, indeed, broken him; it had been Nora who had put him back together, however.

He’d saved her, that terrified, filthy child that she’d been, cowering under the house, waiting to die. In return, she’d saved him, exhausted and demoralized, taking his pain and grief out on his skin with his father’s dagger when his Semblance wasn’t there to numb it for him. Round and round they went, building each other up, never tearing each other down.

One day, perhaps, he could look at his arms the way Nora did, without shame, only compassion for the boy and his pain. But for tonight he’d wear the vambraces and dance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for self harm.


End file.
